If, on the other hand, you are somewhat less than ecstatic about outrageous taxes, hordes of illegal aliens on welfare, the Legislature’s impending gun grab, the fifth or sixth highest utility rates in the US, the utter breakdown of law and order and not just in Boston either….

If any of this concerns you, you might want to… send them a message, as they used to say.

Next Tuesday, you can do just that by voting for a Republican in the special election to replace a Democrat who resigned to grab a $117,000-a-year hack job from Gov. Maura Healey.

Only three of the 39 current members of the state Senate are Republicans. The GOP could literally caucus in a telephone booth. That’s how far the party has fallen, and it’s why a Republican victory might actually mean something.

Rep. Peter Durant is running in a semi-rural central Massachusetts district that includes one city (Gardner), a couple of Worcester wards, and 19 towns, all but one of them in Worcester County.

A Durant victory would be the first Republican takeaway of a Democrat seat since 2018. That’s how long the party’s tailspin has been going on.

Despite their iron grip on power, the Democrats are pulling out all the stops to defeat Durant. They want Massachusetts to be even more of a one-party state than it already is.

The Democrat candidate is another state rep, a 33-year-old named Jonathan Zlotnik. He seems to be rather a nonentity, but all that matters is that “D” after his name.

By his campaign contributors, ye shall know him, and you should see the collection of hacks who’ve ponied up big time for Mr. Z.

First, Marty Meehan, the career coat holder who is now the $697,076-a-year president of hack-infested UMass. Ya think Marty could afford that $200 he sent the Democrat?

Marty has an “assistant to the president” named David McDermott. He makes a mere $350,000 a year. At ZooMass this is called a starting wage. McDermott gave $250.

More interesting, though, is the $200 contribution Zlotnik pocketed even before this current election, from one Ken Halloran. Does that name ring a bell? Probably not, but keep your eyes on this payroll patriot.

Halloran is the “partner” of Tara Healey, the younger sister of Maura Healey. Partner – that’s how Tara is described in the obituary for Halloran’s mom, and in the pages of a local state-run media outlet, the Globe.

He was basically a state-paid lobbyist for the State Police during the very ethical era of Leigha Genduso, Troop E organized racketeering, tubby corrupt union boss Dana Pullman and a cast of dozens of other unspeakably corrupt troopers.

Halloran retired in January 2022, after it became clear that the sister of his “partner” was going to be the next governor. He pocketed his $90,451-a-year pension.

Now he’s in a new lobbying firm with, among others, ex-Sen. Henri Rauschenbach, age 76. Republican Rauschenbach has a nickname – Kickenbach – from his corruption trial in 1995 on conflict-of-interest and conspiracy charges. He beat the rap. It always helps to be tried by a Suffolk County jury.

Like all the other ancient lobbyists I wrote about on Sunday, Kickenbach last won an election in the 20th century – in 1996.

But now Kickenbach is living large, partnered up with the governor’s almost brother-in-law. Ya think that connection helps when you’re soliciting business on Beacon Hill?

It’s only natural that Halloran would be funneling cash to Rep. Peter Durant’s opponent. Democrats, you know.

Many of the ancient lobbyists I wrote about in my Sunday column want to keep the party going. The state is imploding, but they’re getting filthy rich on their way out the door.

Zlotnik’s lobbyist contributors include all the old Boston glad-handers, with names like Joyce, Delaney, Malloy and Hickey. From the Worcester forgotten-but-not-gone brigade, he’s grabbed cash from Joe Ricca and Paul Giorgio.

He’s also collected from most of the furthest-left state senators in the far, far left state Senate: Pat Jehlen, William Brownsberger, Susan Moran, Jason Lewis et al.

But the lobbyists’ showering of cash to Zlotnik is the most telling. These slugs run everything on Beacon Hill. As a group, they’re not terribly swift, but in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man shall lead.

When they write another billion-dollar blank check for their bundlers and advocates and brothers-in-law, all the lobbyists do is scrawl a few words at the top of the legislation:

“Notwithstanding any general or special order to the contrary….”

And that is exactly the reason there should be at least a handful of Republicans up there to yell: “Stop thief!”

Perusing the list of greed-crazed hacks who are spending thousands to defeat Rep. Peter Durant, I keep asking myself one question.

Is there a single ex-legislator over the age of 75 — indicted, convicted or otherwise — who isn’t riding off into the sunset pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from “lobbying” at the State House?

I just came across two more of the erstwhile solons approaching the checkout counter yesterday.

One was an ex-state rep named Steve Karol. He last won an election in 1992. Now, at age 75, he has a lobbying firm with a 78-year-old ex-state senator named W. Paul White. White’s name most recently appeared on the ballot in 1996.

But when the Democrats blew the hack dog whistle, these two old-timers raised their snouts from the trough and came hobbling back to the crime scene. Because they want to keep the dumpster fire that is Massachusetts state government going.

It’s good for business – monkey business.

If you agree with all the above tax-fattened Democrat millionaires that happy days are here again in Massachusetts, you should definitely not vote for Peter Durant in the special state Senate election next Tuesday.

Durant wants to be that guy yelling, “Stop thief!”

(Order Howie’s new book, “Paper Boy: Read All About It!” at howiecarrshow.com or amazon.com.)

Religious violence is on the rise across the world, affecting various groups in different regions, most prominently today against Jews and Christians in the Middle East. Across the world, within the last year, some 360 million Christians have been persecuted or discriminated against for their faith, a growing number. As a leading humanitarian superpower, it falls upon the United States to take a stand for international religious freedom and democracy, which comes hand-in-hand with that freedom.

A world where religious persecution goes unchallenged is a world where democracy and human rights are undermined.

I have spoken with presidential candidates and emphasized the urgency of standing up for International Religious Freedom, especially in the Middle East.

While Israel has the means and every right to fight back against the terrorist Hamas forces, others have nearly no defense. Some 120,000 Christian Armenians were forcefully displaced from their homes in Artsakh, a territory also known as Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenian people of Nagorno-Karabakh were put under blockade and denied food, fuel, and medicine.

Now, the leader of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, whom Hamas has praised for previous attacks on Christians, walks through the empty streets of Stepanakert in Nagorno-Karabakh. Citizen journalists have bravely reported that Aliyev’s supporters have gone so far as to remove Christian crosses from buildings before his visit. These acts are part of a campaign to erase Armenian Christian presence, even churches, from the area to justify their attacks.

All of this while being supported by U.S. taxpayers thanks to waivers of a U.S. law that was supposed to stop us from enabling the Aliyev regime.

Azerbaijan can also enjoy a double standard of aid from America’s enemies. Just as Hamas attacks Israeli civilians thanks to generous support from Iran, the Aliyev regime benefits from the Ayatollah, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and its neighbor Turkey. Armenians are surrounded on all sides by enemies who seek their active destruction because of their faith or who enable their subjugation.

In a now-walked-back statement, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted that Azerbaijan would likely continue its campaign against Armenian Christians with a potential invasion of Armenia proper.

The time to speak up for Armenia, the world’s first Christian nation, is now. The history of the United States is filled with previous leaders who took courageous steps to defend the persecuted, and it is now your turn to uphold this legacy.

The world looks to the United States for guidance. When the next president takes the oath of office, they must commit to championing religious freedom within the nation’s borders and on a global stage. It is not only a call for moral courage but a call for practical action. The United States must sanction those perpetrating these acts of violence. Whether it’s taking on Hamas for its genocidal campaign against Israel or sanctioning the Aliyev Regime, there are actions we as a nation can do to promote freedom on a global scale.

The next steps are clear: silence in the face of genocide is not an option. The next president must be a beacon of hope, advocating for religious freedom and sending a powerful message that the United States stands firmly on the side of justice and humanity.

Bob Vander Plaats is president and CEO of The Family Leader/InsideSources

The manager stared at the slowly exiting graduate for a moment, adding that this person’s idea of “truth” seemed little more than a self-rewarding, ideological, cultural, morally empty, uneducated malevolence including antisemitism afflicting Jews through the ages. While these brave, tradition-blessed, self-disciplined people are small in number, they have done enormous good for the world and are still at it, this imagined manager said by way of expressing my opinions for me through a writing trick.

Some sympathizers of the Hamas celebrants have weirdly suggested their savage deeds were more a matter of responsibility than vicious desire. By way of common sense, video viewers may have noticed the enjoyment as these thugs went about their handiwork, acts of uncivilized, inhumane cruelty that their defenders just might imitate.

The way this torture festival in the Middle East has been so widely welcomed in American colleges across the country and among certain other segments of the American population is itself tortuous. It speaks to our decadence, the wasting away of so much of what has been exceptional about us. Consider how higher education has grown greedy beyond the capacity of millions to pay tuition, that it has been downplaying the crucial humanities and mostly junked the once-required study of the miracle of Western civilization.

In America today, the two-parent family is withering away with atrocious consequences for the children. Public schools are well behind educational achievements in other developed countries in the teaching of reading, writing and arithmetic, although they are helping to instruct students on gender decisions. Common sense is hiding out.

Crime is less and less being punished while more and more ruining lives. The federal government has become a mystery with President Joe Biden being the least answerable question.

In the middle of all of this and far more, we have had these anti-Israel protesters all over the country, including at colleges often with special courses emphasizing diversity, equity and inclusion as the modern way of “reform.” Jews don’t seem to be diverse enough for inclusion. Five Middle East nations attacked Israel in 1948 right after the ancient entity was officially named a new nation. A Hamas official, Fathi Hamad, said every Jew everywhere in the world should be “slaughtered and killed.”

To me, the nonchalance among too many Americans about such ambitions and their blaming Israelis for what neighbors want to do to them is solid evidence of American decadence on the march.

Tribune News Service

“He was wearing his SEAL Team 7 T-shirt, red, white, and blue board shorts, and illuminated a shadow box next to where he was,” said Larkin as he choked up while talking with DCJournal.

He had just recounted how his son fought a losing battle not only inside his own head but with the Veterans Administration. “He says… ‘All they do is keep writing me prescriptions and these drugs, I don’t even feel like I’m in my own body.’ And he said to me, ‘I’m banged up inside.’”

Government statistics say there were 6,146 veteran suicide deaths in 2020, almost 60% higher than non-veteran adults. The next year, 519 active-duty members of the Armed Forces took their own lives.

Larkin, a former Navy SEAL and Secret Service agent who also served as the 40th U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms, used his son’s death to form Warrior Call. It connects veterans and former first responders with resources to help them get past isolation and thoughts of suicide.

“In many cases, it’s because the time they spent in service to our country is not well understood by our society,” Larkin said. “So, when they come out of their service, or while they’re still in uniform, there’s kind of a translation challenge with folks who are on the outside that have not served to understand what life is in uniform.”

Visible injuries sustained while on duty may be one reason why veterans and first responders have trouble adapting to civilian life. But invisible injuries also exist, mainly in the form of Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI). In March, researchers from the Naval Health Research Center discovered a combination of high-level and low-level blasts may increase the chances of military members later developing migraines and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Their conclusion was there is a need for “public health surveillance initiatives for blast exposure and or safety recommendations for training and operational environments.”

The good news is Congress seems to be getting on board. The Senate has passed a resolution making Nov. 12 National Warrior Call Day. It encourages Americans to call active duty military members, veterans, and first responders and talk with them about how they are feeling. The resolution implores people to connect veterans with support, knowing that it could save their lives.

“Those who have taken the oath to defend our country deserve our appreciation and support long after their service ends,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) in a statement. She and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) co-wrote the Warrior Call Day resolution. “I’m glad the Senate passed my bipartisan resolution that, if signed into law, would designate a National Warrior Call Day to help raise awareness and strengthen the relationship between veterans and civilians.”

The House has yet to vote on National Warrior Call Day, something that has caused Larkin to feel frustrated. He wants veterans and first responders to realize that they are not alone. “Much of this work, at least the advancement of the knowledge of what’s going on, especially with regard to brain health, is occurring in the nonprofit and the private sector with a lot of the universities and research institutions that are not aligned with the government,” he said.

He hopes people will start checking up on veterans that they know. “If you sense that they’re not in a good place, then get them tied up with some resources that potentially can help pull them out of the darkness and get them to a better place.”

Taylor Millard writes about politics and public policy/InsideSources

Today, some 57 years later, the murder of a  family in a rural area would barely make the front page. Mass murders such as the recent horrific event  in Lewiston, Maine are now commonplace in schools, recreational facilities and retail establishments.

Within the past week, just prior to the Lewiston tragedy,  a judge was gunned down by a father whose custody rights the judge had limited.  The circumstances surrounding these events  and scores of other mass murders illustrate our collective vulnerability due to the  superior status many still insist is provided by the Second Amendment.

As these murders continue, time after time the public offers “thoughts and prayers” to families of the victims and mourns the senseless killings of children and adults who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.  In the meantime, a feckless Congress struggles for weeks to elect a Speaker because many remain beholden to the lingering shadow of an indicted former president fined $10,000 last week by a judge  for refusing to keep his mouth shut.

In reality, we are all still held hostage by a government unwilling to face the grim reality that citizens have no reason to possess these weapons of mass destruction. Gun control remains the third rail for too many elected officials who still maintain the right to possess them is as sacred as it was when enacted to protect the militia during the Revolution.

In 1919, following World War I, the United States was besieged by a national crisis of widespread intoxication and domestic violence. Both the House and the Senate concluded that a moratorium on alcohol consumption could reduce the number of incidents. As a result, Prohibition, the 18th Amendment, was enacted, to substantially restrict the consumption of alcohol.  Although repealed in 1931, Prohibition succeeded in reducing alcohol related domestic violence during the period and thereafter.

A similar legislative enactment is needed in 2023 since we are all hostages staring down the barrel of the next assault rifle that could murder any of us or our families. Lewiston, Maine is just the latest location that underscores that vulnerability.

Each day,  we continue to read the shocking details of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Ironically, the refusal of Congress to pass any meaningful gun control legislation makes us hostages in our own country, endangered by  the tactics of unpredictable and unstable individuals still entitled to possess assault weapons.

Unless and until preventive actions are taken concerning their possession, we will probably see many sequels to “In Cold Blood.”

Thoughts and prayers have limits.

Steven Kramer was an assistant attorney general under Massachusetts Attorney General Frank Bellotti from 1980 to ’87.

So, what the Israelis continue to find are body parts, the humans with which those parts were once associated blown up or burned beyond recognition, such that extracting and examining DNA is impossible.

And this, of course, doesn’t count the 5,800 Israelis who, maimed and mutilated on Oct. 7, are still alive. It doesn’t count the 230 people – the elderly, the disabled, the frail, the wounded, the helpless, children and babies, all terrified – abducted at gunpoint and held in Hamas’ tunnels, constructed under hospitals, homes and mosques so that Israel is constrained from going after them. And it doesn’t count the rest of Israel’s families, virtually all of whom know someone killed, maimed or held hostage by Hamas.

While Israelis were being blown or burned to unrecognizable pieces by a joyful Hamas, here in America the academic year had barely begun at colleges and universities where students pay upwards of $100,000 annually for the privilege of studying the humanities and liberal values. Comfortable faculty members were returning to the familiar pleasant routine of attending to personal jealousies and intra-departmental rivalries. Students resumed arguing on social media about just how egregiously the disturbing prospect of knowing that a speaker had been invited to campus prepared to express a view contrary to their own would constitute a violation of their safe spaces. News that 1,400 Israelis – including  many hundreds their own age – had been butchered to death and 5,800 more maimed barely piqued their interest. After all, these were Israelis – and whether Israelis were even entitled to live life free of being butchered was politically debatable.

As for the 230 souls who have been kidnapped and are forcibly held in dank Hamas tunnels, either near dead or scared to death, among faculty members and students who fancy themselves “progressive,” this has elicited a Big Yawn.

But when Israel, like any other country not only on the planet but in the history of the planet, determined that of course this could neither be tolerated nor permitted to recur, the ears of faculty and students perked up. And not only perked up. Promptly and self-confidently, they assessed that the outrage was not Hamas’ slaughter of Israelis, but Israel’s determination not to permit the slaughter from happening again.

So it is now a “thing” for pious defenders of “free speech” in all context other than those involving Israel to rip down posters with pictures of kidnapped Israelis held in captivity, posted so that we can see their faces and hold them in our hearts.

On innumerable American campuses, in settings in which students are charged to learn that humans are to be respected, not massacred, vigils are held to honor as “martyrs” those who pulverized Israeli children – and boasted about it.

Faculty members compete to ingratiate themselves with pro-Hamas students by proclaiming themselves “exhilarated” by the killings, and “in solidarity” with the murders as acts of “resistance.”  Students cheer on the murders as contributions to the “cleaning” of Israel. Professors at Columbia University inform us that the slaughter of Jews demands “contextualization.”

Here’s where we are. When it comes to the slaughter of Jews, many in American academia are down with it. But ask them if they’re antisemites?

Of course not.

Jeff Robbins is a Boston lawyer and former U.S. delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

Healey is planning to stop admitting migrants and the homeless to motels and shelters on Wednesday but faces a legal challenge from a civil rights group.

Liberal-on-liberal crime can get especially ugly.

Healey is staring down a lawsuit from the Boston-based group Lawyers for Civil Rights, which argues that the state must give the Legislature 90 days’ notice before changing the state’s shelter system of handling migrants and homeless.

“The idea that the state would want to turn its back on children in desperate situations, forcing them to live in the streets, in cars, and in unsafe situations is appalling to many in the state,” Lawyers for Civil Rights litigation director Oren Sellstrom told WBUR.

Pretty tough words for a Democratic governor to hear – that you’re forcing homeless and migrant children to live on the streets.

Healey is so desperate not to appear tone-deaf to the migrant crisis that her office on Sunday night put out an “embargoed” press release announcing that the administration was partnering with the Office of Homeland Security to host a work authorization clinic for migrants in two weeks.

The non-news announcement was withheld from public release until 6:30 a.m. Monday so as to get a better bounce from the morning media. But Healey was nowhere to be seen on Monday because she had no public schedule. That way she could avoid pesky questions about the lawsuit or swelling numbers of migrants who are about to be turned away from shelter.

“We are glad that the Biden-Harris administration is hosting this clinic with us, which will help process work authorizations as efficiently as possible. Many shelter residents want to work but face significant barriers to getting their work authorizations,” Healey said in the statement. “This clinic will be critical for building on the work that our administration has already been leading to connect more migrants with work opportunities.”

You get it. A lot of self-congratulating.

Wu faces similar backlash from some liberals for passing an ordinance clearing out the encampments from the drug-ravaged Mass and Cass zone. Her administration will be sending in police on Wednesday to remove tents and clean up the open drug dealing that has been going on – hopefully to arrest a few criminals as well.

The city has reserved extra beds to house the homeless living at Mass and Cass but won’t let them build any new tents.

Several progressives on the council voted against the ordinance but not enough to block it.

But civil rights advocates will be watching closely to see that police don’t go over the line or simply push people out onto the streets. Wu will face stiff blowback from her progressive friends if that happens so she’s hoping for a smooth transition.

It is also Gov. Maura Healey’s deadline for taking in new immigrant families who are flocking to Massachusetts seeking free housing and support under the state’s “right to shelter” law.

So, if a family with children comes trick or treating at your door looking for shelter, they are liable to be immigrants from Haiti or Afghanistan or Ecuador looking for a place to crash.

Massachusetts is an internationally known sanctuary or handout state.

That may be an exaggeration, but you get the point.

The state is so overflowing with migrants that there are no longer the means to care for them.

There is no more room at the inn, Healey said in so many words– as if that will stop them from coming. Massachusetts is overflowing with immigrant families from around the world with few places to house them.

“If there is no place for them, where do they go?” House Speaker Ron Mariano sensibly asked.

It is a good question.

But Healey does not seem to have a good answer. She said that even though the state does not have “enough space, service providers or funds” to expand shelters, “Families with high need, including health and safety risks, will be prioritized for shelter placement.”

If the shelters are full, newly arrived immigrant families will be placed on a waitlist if they are not “immediately connected with shelter.”

Since no immigrants, let alone illegal immigrants, are sent back to where they came from, where do they stay while waiting to be housed?  In tents on the Boston Common? Not likely.

Healey’s remarks translated mean that the state will somehow continue to house and feed incoming immigrant families despite their immigrant status and despite Healey’ Halloween deadline that goes into effect Tuesday.

Winter is coming and no one should be left out in the cold. Everybody agrees on that.

The challenge is coming up with a solution.

While the state has the capacity to accommodate 7,500 immigrant families, or 24,000 individuals, there are currently some 7,200 families in the system, 3,489 families with children living in hotels and motels and 3,629 in traditional shelters.

They get taxpayer-funded free housing, free food, free medical care, security, free schooling for the children and so on. The taxpayers get the bill without even a thank you.

They are still coming, and the problem is still growing.

Unless Healey gets a handle on it, it will consume her administration just the way the COVID pandemic consumed Gov. Charlie Baker, her predecessor, limiting the time and energy he could have spent on other issues, like the MBTA, for instance.

But just as COVID was not Baker’s fault, Healey, although a welcoming progressive, had nothing to do with the immigrant invasion. It was Joe Biden who opened the borders and let millions of foreigners into the country with no questions asked.

It is also Biden who has refused to deal with the problem or provide Healey with the federal funds she needs to pay for Biden’s reckless and wrongheaded open door immigration policy.

And all the big talkers of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation, from Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Eddie Markey on down, have been unable to extract a dime from Biden to deal with the problem.

Healey was rightly proud to have signed into law the recent tax cut bill.

But at the rate the state is spending money on the immigrants, and with no help from Biden, she soon may have to raise taxes to pay for it all.

It is costing Massachusetts taxpayers $45 million a month to house and care for the immigrants already here. Healey has already burned through $350 million previously appropriated for the immigrants. She is now asking the Legislature for $250 million more.

If the additional $250 million is approved by the Legislature—which it has not yet taken up—Speaker Mariano said it would not even be enough “to get us to the end of this month.”

The end of the month is here.

Happy Halloween.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

Some institutions, like universities, promise their members they won’t be punished for free expression. But for-profit employers rarely promise to protect employees’ speech, for market-oriented reasons. Because companies care about what customers and clients think, they typically reserve the authority to make workers comply with their preferred speech policies.

So-called “cancel culture” offers a clear example of how what you say can have consequences. Those canceled in recent years mostly found they had little recourse other than abjectly apologizing and hoping the cancellation would have a sell-by date. Consequences ranged from getting fired to losing work to simply being criticized — albeit brutally.

As it happened, most canceling initially came from the left. As a consequence, most leftists either thought there was nothing wrong with the practice or pointed out that “cancellation” was nothing more than the exercise of free speech by critics. The right, for its part, complained bitterly but offered little in the way of a principled objection to the idea that people are free to criticize, even boycott, opinions they don’t like. In the end, cancellation emerged as a phenomenon enabled by the combination of free speech and free market forces.

Since Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, the political winds of intense public criticism have shifted. Left-leaning critics of Israel are now finding themselves the targets of calls for cancellation.
Paddy Cosgrave, the CEO of Web Summit, had to step down after a tweet that called out Israeli war crimes but never mentioned Hamas, let alone its intentional killing of noncombatants. Cosgrave tried to retract and contextualize, but his efforts were not sufficient to save his job. He’s only the most prominent example — others whose tweets have cost them employment include journalists and actors.

Meanwhile, at law schools including NYU, Columbia and Harvard (where I teach), several students have had job offers rescinded by corporate law firms on the theory that they — or organizations they led — excused or endorsed violence committed by Hamas. In some cases, this happened even after the students made it clear that they condemned Hamas and their organizations retracted their earlier statements.

Under principles of academic freedom, a university may forcefully disagree with its students’ views but must not not punish students for expression of political opinions. Academic freedom isn’t exactly the same as First Amendment free speech. Its purpose is to foster an atmosphere of open intellectual discussion in pursuit of truth under conditions of civility, not to impose the strict neutrality that bars government from picking winners in the realm of ideas.

That means universities may exercise professional judgment about the quality of ideas when making decisions about hiring, tenure or grades. It would be impossible for the university to be entirely neutral about the content of ideas when fulfilling these functions. (Public universities pose their own complex problems. They are both state actors for First Amendment purposes and also academic institutions.)

Private employers don’t adhere to the principles of academic freedom nor are they bound by the First Amendment. Their calculus is different: They have to weigh the reputational costs of hiring people associated with controversial political positions against the reputational costs of being seen as having a political litmus test for employees.

Our polarized politics mean that companies must tread carefully when they make expressly political decisions. They owe it to their employees, their customers and their shareholders to exercise good judgment after real thought. Companies do better when they have clearly stated values and transparent processes in place for sound decision making.

As for individuals, we no longer have sharp dividing lines between our social media lives, our work lives, and our expression of political ideas. It follows that we had better realize that that the difference between contexts determines the consequences of our speech. The First Amendment remains a bedrock of democratic values, but it protects us from the state, not from each other.

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery and the Refounding of America.”/Tribune News Service

It is a welcome development for the country and for Washington’s ability to govern. Unfortunately, the selection does not guarantee that the United States will be able to swiftly come to the aid of its close allies, including Israel, as well as fund its own government and sustain domestic strength.

After conservative firebrand Jim Jordan’s third failed attempt at becoming Speaker of the House of Representatives last week, the Republican conference dropped him as their nominee.

This led to a new open nominating process that started with nine candidates from across the Republican spectrum and ended with moderate-leaning Majority Whip Tom Emmer as the nominee.

However, within four hours, his bid was shot down by the MAGA wing of the party and he never made it to the House floor. Right-wing representatives were following the lead of former President Donald Trump who signaled he was against Emmer and even made calls to House members expressing his opposition.

The root of the MAGA hostility towards Emmer’s nomination was his vote to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral college victory. Some GOP members also singled out Emmer for supporting same-sex marriage, and in an appalling exchange a colleague even questioned his Christian faith.

After Emmer’s withdrawal on Tuesday, the Republican conference miraculously coalesced around the lesser known Mike Johnson – a deeply conservative member and mentee of Jordan who was backed by the far-right of the party – and he was elected speaker on Wednesday afternoon without losing a single Republican vote on the floor.

While it is undoubtedly positive that the American people finally have a Speaker of the House again, the Republican Party is playing with fire by choosing someone with little leadership experience and a rigid hard-right track record. Democrats are not innocent either, as their decision to join the motion to vacate on Kevin McCarthy led to an extreme conservative gaining the speaker’s gavel

Johnson is extremely conservative on social issues, as he voted against federal protections for same-sex marriage and has repeatedly supported and co-sponsored national abortion ban bills. In fact, he is the first former chair of the deeply conservative Republican Study Committee to become speaker.

Furthermore, Johnson was a prominent election denier in 2020 and the legal architect of the Electoral College objections that were denied by the Supreme Court.

It is clear that Trump and his MAGA acolytes got exactly what they wanted, as one of their own is now the most powerful Republican in Washington. If their victory could not be any more clear, Rep. Matt Gaetz emphasized it with glee on Steve Bannon’s podcast, “If you don’t think that moving from Kevin McCarthy to MAGA Mike Johnson shows the ascendance of this movement and where the power in the Republican Party truly lies, then you’re not paying attention.”

House Democrats are already seeking to paint Johnson as “Jim Jordan in a suit.” Make no mistake, Johnson’s extreme positions along with his lack of fundraising skill compared to his predecessor will hurt congressional Republicans’ electoral chances in 2024. While former Speaker Kevin McCarthy raised over $100 million for Republicans during the 2022 election cycle, Speaker Johnson has raised just $553,013 total this cycle.

This dynamic will certainly create challenges for Republican congressmen from moderate districts in California who benefitted from McCarthy’s robust political operation. Along with losing out on fundraising opportunities, Johnson’s extreme right-wing social positions will not play well in these swing districts.

There is also some doubt over whether Johnson will be on the side of public opinion on upcoming legislation to strengthen our allies and ensure we avoid a government shutdown that could have catastrophic economic consequences.

Johnson voted against the current continuing resolution, which has reached its halfway mark, and he has been one of the staunchest opponents to sending aid to Ukraine.

It is clear the American people want Congress to support our allies as they battle terrorism and authoritarianism, and Johnson and the GOP must show voters they can be trusted. A poll this week from The Economist/YouGov found 61% of registered voters think the U.S. should maintain or increase military aid to Ukraine and 83% of registered voters think the U.S. should maintain or increase military aid to Israel.

While President Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries line up behind a supplemental bill that will send military aid to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan, as well as new funding to help secure the southern border, there is significant opposition among House Republicans to additional spending, especially for Ukraine.

The ultra conservative Johnson mirrors the right flank of his caucus on these issues, but to pass real solutions to the pressing challenges facing Congress he must find a middle ground that Democrats and Senate Republicans can accept. Otherwise, moderate Republicans will be forced to go around him and work closely with their Democratic counterparts.

The first big test for Speaker Johnson is in less than a month when he will either let the government close down or work on a bipartisan basis to keep America as a functioning democracy at a crucial moment for our allies. Positively, Johnson seems to be moving towards the middle in his new leadership role, as he has proposed a second continuing resolution that would last through January, albeit with little detail about the spending numbers.

In order to have a successful speakership and meet the needs of the United States at this critical inflection point, it would be wise for Johnson to moderate his views and seek productive compromise with centrist Republicans and Democrats. Speaker Johnson must put policy over politics to bolster our allies and protect our economy.

Douglas Schoen is a longtime Democratic political consultant.

That’s how ex-pols are often described at the State House after they leave elective office. But after checking out the latest Beacon Hill lobbying reports, that old saw needs to be updated.

Forgotten, but not gone – and filthy rich!

It is astonishing to see how much some of these ancient shiftless hacks are grabbing, especially when you consider how long it’s been since any of them ever won an election.

Let’s start with 79-year-old ex-Lt. Gov. Tommy O’Neill – “Thomas P. O’Neill da Turd” as the sergeant-at-arms used to describe him when he entered the House chambers for the annual State of the State address.

Da Turd is the son of ex-House speaker Tip O’Neill, and he was dragged into office twice on the bottom of the Democrat gubernatorial ticket. But on his own Tipleet won just a single election – as a state rep in Cambridge, in 1972.

No problem, though. For the first six months of the year, his firm, O’Neill and Associates, collected $1.89 million from 59 clients. And here I was wondering how he was paying for that swell new waterside mansion in Harwich Port, with the smart Mercedes sports coupe parked outside. Hi Tommy – see ya next summer, pal!

State House hacks usually make their millions the old-fashioned way – with the kiss in the mail. Like Billy Bulger, the Corrupt Midget. Now 89, the CM has been pocketing a pension that is now $273,759 a year for more than 20 years.

At the State House, one of Bulger’s stooges was Chester Greenough Atkins – “Billy Bulger’s butler,” as he was known. Fat and entitled (he was born in Switzerland) Chet served briefly in Congress until he retired due to ill health – the voters got sick of him.

A four-term incumbent, he lost the Democrat primary in 1992, with a miserable 35 percent of the vote. It may have been the worst Congressional primary drubbing ever until Liz Cheney last year in Wyoming.

But no problem – at age 75, Billy Bulger’s butler is now a “partner” in something called Tremont Strategies. According to the State House News Service, Atkins’ crew took in $2.04 million in the first six months of the year.

Another lobbyist in that outfit is one Jason Aluia. He used to be a coat holder for Sal DiMasi, the former House speaker, convicted felon and jailbird.

Given the fact that Sal can list his Bureau of Prisons number – 27371-038 – as a resume enhancer, you’d think he too would be making the big bucks in his post-prison career as a lobbyist. But Sal, at age 78, is not rolling in the dough, maybe because his former street soldiers are cutting in on the take.

Not just Aluia, but Aaron Michlewitz, who went from skipper of Sal’s staff to being current Speaker Ron Mariano’s elected consigliere as Ways and Means chairman. Poor Sal – his payroll Charlies are putting him to shame in the lobbying grift.

Speaking of the Boston boys, how about the East Boston crew? Bobby Travaglini, who’s a young whippersnapper in this mob at a mere 71 years old, made his bones in the 1970s as a precinct captain working for guys named Dee Dee Coviello and Sonny Buttiglieri.

Now Trav, who became Senate president, paid himself $445,000 in the first six months of the year. Trav, you’ve come a long way from Junior’s Trolley!

According to Secretary of State Bill Galvin’s records, Trav is tied for highest-paid lobbyist with another Ward 1 ward heeler – Carlo Basile, the ex-state rep who went to work for then-Gov. Charlie Parker as patronage boss. Now Carlo made just under half a million a year in the first six months of the year.

It’s amazing how well these Eastie guys are doing, especially considering the ruination of Ward 1. In the old days, Eastie pols were strictly small timers, like Pixie Palladino, who definitely wasn’t a pixie, or James Coffey, who was known as “I’ll Take a Buck.” The name said it all.

Carlo is in the same firm with ex-Rep. Mike Costello. Costello is a second-generation State House hack. His father was another Bulger stooge in the Senate – Nick Costello. Now the son has figured out the racket, and their firm raked in $2.72 million in the first six months of the year. Costello pocketed $335,000 in the first six months of the year.

Another erstwhile Eastie pol living large in his golden years is Dennis Kearney. He last won an election in 1982, and is now 74 years old. Kearney’s lobbying firm collected $1.42 million in the first six months of 2023.

Obviously, even a dunce can make big bucks in the lobbying racket. Consider ex-Rep. Brian Dempsey. He got his B.A. from UMass – Lowell – at age 32.

Like Sal DiMasi, he has what you would consider a stellar State House curriculum vitae. Not only has he been lugged for drunk driving, but Dempsey was also taken into protective custody by the local cops for getting into a brawl with his brother in his mom’s parlor – on Mother’s Day.

Dempsey now has the third highest-grossing lobbying firm in the hackerama. He personally made $300,000 in the first six months of the year.

Then there’s Phil Johnston – talk about forgotten but not gone. He was first elected to the legislature back in the days of the old 240-member House, which was abolished in 1978. Mike Dukakis gave him a hack job in 1984, and Bill Delahunt stole a US House seat from him in a primary recount – in 1996.

But living well is the best revenge, and now, at the ripe old age of 79, Phil Johnston just pocketed $269,600 from his lobbying firm. That is what his old boss Mike Dukakis used to call a “good job at a good wage.”

How ecstatic do you think all the above were last week when Ron Mariano announced he’d run for yet another term as Speaker next year?

He’s from Quincy, which so many of these glad-handers have ties as well. So the gravy train will keep on trucking for a while longer.

And why can’t Mr. Speaker just keep running and running and running? After all, he’s still a young man. Ron doesn’t turn 77 until Tuesday – Halloween.

No wonder he gets along so splendidly with all his fellow ancient hacks.

They’ve all spent a lifetime together – slurping happily at the public trough.

Trick or treat, taxpayers!

(Order Howie’s new book, “Paper Boy: Read All About It!” at howiecarrshow.com or amazon.com.)

If your town or city does not abide by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 in its entirety, it is more than likely leaving the door open for dead folks to walk into the voting precincts. Or better yet, these folks could vote absentee – well, they are “absentee voters” in a sense – after all they are dead or no longer live where they once lived. But for the overly ambitious political operative, they are votes to be had.

Both parties potentially could take advantage of this situation. The political machines of each party learn this early on. I did. Because back in the early 1980s I got my very first volunteer job as a political “worker bee.” Years later, I realized I was helping to build the foundation for such practices.

It must be noted that, even at its worst, this practice would only affect close elections. Not too close, because the bad political operatives involved could not afford to have a recount as it may shine unwanted light on the corruption.

There are a variety of ways the bad folks can accomplish their goal. One method could be door-to-door canvassing. Keep in mind that the name and address on the voting roll may not match who actually resides at that address. That represents an opportunity. It clearly means that John Doe has moved or is dead. But it does not mean John Doe cannot still vote.

Without any form of voter ID system in place anybody can become John Doe. After all, he does not exist, as you have confirmed, per your door-to-door canvassing.

If there is no voter rolls list management, as required by the aforementioned law of 1993, John Doe’s name would still appear as a potential voter.

In Connecticut in the summer of 2020 during COVID, 100,000 ballots came back to the Secretary of State as undeliverable. This would represent 8% of the registered Democrat and Republican voters (but would not include independents). The Connecticut Secretary of State claimed that the national average was far worse, hitting a whopping 15%. This means that voters have moved or passed away since the last time the list was updated. In Connecticut the election authorities quickly ordered local towns and cities to purge these folks from their voter rolls.

That begs the question: How long were these folks wrongly on the voting rolls? For years, maybe decades? We only found out because of new election practices that emerged with the pandemic.

It is very simple to figure this out. Question: When was the last time you received a postcard or letter from the local person in your town responsible for voting list management? If the answer is not in a while or never, it is likely you have been targeted by “dead” or missing folks voting.

Bad actors, usually part of the local political machine, know who cannot be found and they “find” these folks and allow them to vote with other people “filling” in. They are the “weeds” within the “grassroots” effort.

There is a second chance to catch these fraudulent activities and prevent this from happening. And I hope you answer this question correctly: When was the last time you were asked to show any form of identification prior to voting? If your answer is never (my answer), rarely, or I cannot remember, then I would say your town is a prime target for dead-people voting.

I strongly believe that we have the best voting systems in the world. But we also need to follow the laws on the books and manage our voting lists and remove people who should not be on them anymore, purely because they do not exist at that address, town, state, or at all.

It is imperative that we have some form of verification of identity at the polls. The NAACP and other like-minded organizations that once supported the Voter Registration Act now call most forms of list management a violation of voting rights laws. That is a bogus charge. And they cry about photo ID requirements as disproportionately hurting Black people. That’s laughable.

Back in the day, the unofficial rule was for each party to use only folks from their own party. This meant that dead or missing Republicans were left to Republican leaders and dead or missing Democrats for Democrat leaders. This would prevent “two” John Does from showing up on election day at the polls. When a candidate is “set up” or loses the support of their party leaders, then the opposing party could use all the dead folks. That would usually result in a landslide or doom the candidate previously favored to win to narrowly lose their election.

It is simple. If your town has proper list management and proper voter identifications at the polls there can be no dead people voting, as they would remain in their graves.

However, if you only do one of the two, it is possible they can vote and if you do neither, it is highly likely that the dead and missing have been voting in your town for years. Ask your town officials when was the last time the voter rolls have been updated via mail canvassing.

In a democracy, the will of the people should prevail, not the will of the political machine.

Gary Franks served three terms as U.S. representative for Connecticut’s 5th District. He was the first Black Republican elected to the House in nearly 60 years and New England’s first Black member of the House. Host: podcast “We Speak Frankly.” Author: “With God, For God, and For Country.” @GaryFranks/Tribune News Service

It is the poisoned fruit of teaching a generation of college students to despise their own civilization.

Jesse Jackson famously led a chant at Stanford University in 1987, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go.” He was talking about the college course, but he might as well have been talking about the thing itself.

Jackson and his allies had extraordinary success in extinguishing the teaching of Western Civ. Not only have we largely stopped transmitting the story of our own civilization, we have substituted an alternative narrative that the West is reducible to racism, imperialism and colonialism.

It is in this context that the current outburst of anti-Zionism has to be understood. Yes, it has been fed by anti-Israel agitation on campus over the decades and yes, students are susceptible to witless radicalism in the best of circumstances. Yet the loathing of Israel is particularly intense because it is viewed as an outpost of Western civilization and all its alleged ills.

The hatred of Israel is tainted by and, in some cases, driven by antisemitism. Another way to look at it, though, is that it’s not so much about hatred of the “the other,” as progressives put it, as hatred of ourselves and all our works.

It is, on one level, incorrect to consider Israel exclusively an artifact of the West. The Jews are indigenous to the region going back to Abraham, with their story caught up in the story of the land. A large proportion of the current population traces its origins from the Middle East and North Africa, rather than Europe.

But there is no doubt that Israel is a Western society — in its political system, in its respects for rights, in its innovative economy, in its mores.

From any rational perspective, this would be something to celebrate. Many legitimate criticisms can be made of Israel, and indeed are a feature of the Israeli domestic debate itself, but there’s no doubt that it is a flourishing society.

If Gaza were equally Westernized, it would be worrying about whether it’s overbuilding seaside real estate rather than having to get water and electricity from the neighboring country its governing authority — a savage terror group — is trying to destroy.

Yet this is the society that anti-Western opinion holds up and wants to sweep all before it. This point of view loves Gaza for its failure and hates Israel for its success; loves Gaza for its terror and hates Israel for its self-defense; loves Gaza for its vicious anti-Western sponsors and hates Israel for its Western allies, especially the United States.

Violence is part of the radical anti-Western vision. The anti-colonial bible, “The Wretched of the Earth,” written by Frantz Fanon in 1961, is widely taught on campus.

Fanon wrote that “decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.”

By this standard, Hamas is a good and worthy anti-colonial organization, and there’s no wonder it has found supporters and useful idiots among the West’s self-loathing radicals.

Rich Lowry is editor in chief of the National Review

The president’s campaign has made a calculated risk that Granite State voters will forget Biden’s snub of refusing to put his name on the primary ballot.

Chances are they won’t forget. New Hampshire has four electoral votes and in a close election losing them could be a major blow to Democrats’ hopes of holding on to the White House.

But Biden has chosen South Carolina over New Hampshire and Iowa by endorsing the Palmetto State primary first in line – rewarding the place that rescued his 2020 campaign.

South Carolina is now the leadoff voting state in the selection process under Democratic National Committee rules, but New Hampshire is ignoring that DNC list, vowing to hold its primary first under its own state law. Iowa Democrats are also working to preserve their early January caucus.

“While the president wishes to participate in the primary, he is obligated as a Democratic candidate for president to comply with the Delegate Selection Rules for the 2024 Democratic National Convention promulgated by the Democratic National Committee,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a letter advising New Hampshire officials he won’t be on the ballot.

Baloney. Biden is picking South Carolina over New Hampshire for strictly political reasons and for payback for embarrassing him four years ago.

Biden finished fifth in the New Hampshire primary and wants to punish the state that kicked his butt.

His campaign is likely instead to mount a write-in campaign and finish first that way – the same strategy President Lyndon Johnson used in 1968.

“The reality is that Joe Biden will win the NH FITN (first-in-the-nation) primary in January, win renomination in Chicago and will be re-elected in November. NH voters know and trust Joe Biden that’s why he is leading Trump in NH by double digits,” NH Democratic chair Ray Buckley said in a blustery statement.

The only problem is Johnson dropped out of the race after Democrat Eugene McCarthy finished a closer-than-expected second. So, if Biden doesn’t earn a resounding write-in victory, it could be viewed as a loss.

The move by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to abandon the Democratic race and run for president as an independent makes it easier for Biden to slide by. But the president could now face Democratic opposition from U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, who decided Friday to launch a primary challenge. The moderate Minnesota Democrat has argued that Biden is too old to run again and filed papers on Friday to get on the ballot in New Hampshire.

Phillips’s surprise decision could complicate Biden’s plan for a write-in win in the Granite State.

“I think it’s a mistake that he’s not putting his name on the ballot,” New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan said.

Consider that a warning.

She is the state auditor who wants to take down the Massachusetts Legislature, and she is on her way to doing it.

DiZoglio, a former legislator herself, is seeking clear authority from the voters to audit — or, as some fear, oversee — the workings of the House and Senate the way the auditor does other state agencies.

Toward that end, she is halfway to gathering the 75,000 signatures of Massachusetts voters needed to get the issue on the 2024 ballot for voter ratification as she awaits a decision from Attorney General Andrea Campbell paving the way for her to sue the Legislature to comply.

Either way it is all but certain that the question will not only be on the ballot, but, given the public’s general negative attitude toward the Legislature, it will surely pass.

While most in Massachusetts speak well of their representative or senator, the same voters look much less kindly on the Legislature as a whole.

Both House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka oppose the move on the grounds that the Legislature is a separate branch of government that makes its own rules and governs and audits itself.

Others on Beacon Hill, where DiZoglio has gotten little support, believe it is a vengeful political power grab by DiZoglio who had a controversial and rocky road with the Democrat leadership in both the House and Senate when she served in both branches before being elected auditor in 2022.

DiZoglio, of course, denies the charges, saying that she is fulfilling a campaign promise to bring accountability and transparency to the Legislature.

DiZoglio seems unperturbed by the little support she has gathered from her colleagues at the State House, from Gov. Maura Healey on down, all of whom are fellow Democrats, as is just about everyone else on Beacon Hill.

Massachusetts is a one-party Democrat state and, since the few Republicans at the State House don’t count, the Democrats end up fighting among themselves.

Merits of DiZoglio’s issue aside — and there are questions of tampering with the legislative process — she continues to gather momentum, attracting support outside the State House from Republicans, Democrats, conservatives and liberals.

Last week, the conservative Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance joined the left-wing Our Revolution in support of DiZoglio’s cause and offered volunteers to gather signatures.

“The more the merrier,” DiZoglio said, adding that she now has 530 volunteers out gathering signatures that are all due to be filed with the secretary of state Nov. 22.

If DiZoglio succeeds, she could shake up the Legislature the way it was rocked a generation ago when the move to reduce the size of the House from 240 to 160 members was approved.

Back then, after a long struggle in the 1970s, the Massachusetts League of Women Voters, then an important public interest lobby group, was successful through signature drives, media campaigns and lobbying, to win the battle to reduce the House by 80 members.

It was an idea that seemed good at the time. It was supposed to make the House more efficient and transparent, which is a joke. Democracy is designed to be messy.

What it did, however, was to make the Speaker of the House more powerful since the smaller House, with fewer dissidents, was easier to control. Many important issues, once hatched out in open House debate, are now decided behind closed doors and rubber-stamped by the House.

In that way the House is indeed more efficient, but the quality of the legislation approved and the way it is passed depends on the nature of the speaker and the leadership team he has around him, not the rank-and-file members.

Also, in a smaller House, members who were once approachable by average citizens became distant once they were stashed away in their new offices protected by staff and press secretaries. Minority representation also took a hit.

Speaker Mariano, a moderate Democrat with a steady hand amidst the growing progressive crowd at the State House, has by all accounts been a good, fair and common-sense leader. Whack job progressives do not rule the House as they do the Senate.

So, at age 77, it was generally greeted as good news when Mariano said he will run for re-election and remain as speaker, at least for a while. He just might be the last moderate Democrat to hold the job. After him comes le deluge.

But no matter his skill and experience, it will be tough going to stem DiZoglio’s voter drive to bring the Legislature to heel.

But be careful what you vote for. You just might get it.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

Powerful Mexican cartels, sophisticated multibillion-dollar criminal enterprises, are already trafficking illicit tobacco to fund their violent operations. The current regulated market for menthol cigarettes is $30 billion. A nationwide prohibition on menthols will create a tremendous profit incentive for these cartels to become more aggressive in their activity.

As the General Director of the National Citizen Observatory of Security, Justice and Legality A.C. (ONC), and a National Security Council of Mexico member, I know what the cartels are capable of. These high-tech, organized crime networks continue to innovate and diversify beyond drugs and weapons. They evolve into new products and industries where they can capitalize on growing demand while also minimizing risk.

Over the past few years, the illicit tobacco market has allowed these criminal networks to generate massive revenue – rivaling narcotics – with a fraction of the risk. The sale of illegal cigarettes is already a multibillion-dollar market in the U.S. Criminal networks profit from the price and tax disparities between states. Increasing the transborder traffic of contraband cigarettes from Mexico into the U.S. should give policymakers pause.

The cartels know better than most that tobacco restrictions like bans or taxes won’t reduce consumer demand for an addictive product. So, when states like California ban menthol cigarettes and legitimate retailers are prohibited from selling products to meet consumer demand, the opportunistic cartels quickly become the suppliers of choice.

Mexico’s most powerful and violent drug cartel is Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG). According to our estimates, CJNG’s assets are in excess of $20 billion, with a presence in at least 27 of the 32 Mexican states. The CJNG, which has been sanctioned by the United States for its role in drug trafficking, is a glaring example of a modern cartel diversifying and smuggling tobacco along the same routes that it traffics narcotics like fentanyl, weapons, and sadly, even humans.

Recent investigations have linked the CJNG to Tobacco International Holdings SA, a Switzerland-registered corporation. This linkage has enabled the cartel to monopolize the Mexican cigarette market and evade sanctions as it ships tobacco into the U.S.

The House Committee on Homeland Security chairman emphasized the threat of cartel tobacco trafficking in a recent letter to the secretary of Homeland Security.

My fear, and that of many colleagues in government and international security, is that a nationwide menthol cigarette in the U.S. will play right into the hands of the CJNG and other violent Mexican cartels. A ban would give the cartels virtual control of another lucrative commodity across America’s southern border. This will create an unprecedented windfall for the CJNG and their rival cartels. The resulting profits fund violent crime throughout Mexico, perpetuating a lawless culture.

With the next presidential election in the United States on the horizon, now is the time for an important discussion about smart policy. The president of the United States must understand that overzealous domestic policies have foreign implications, and bans on popular consumer products like menthol cigarettes can create adverse outcomes in both Mexico and the U.S.

I urge the Biden administration, members of the United States Congress, and candidates for president to work with Mexican authorities to understand what policies, such as a menthol cigarette ban, would impact both our countries. Instead of empowering Mexican cartels, we should be doing everything in our power to work collaboratively to stop the CJNG and other cartels from growing in power and influence.

Francisco Rivas is the General Director of the National Citizen Observatory of Security, Justice and Legality A.C. (ONC) and member of the National Security Council of Mexico/InsideSources

Massachusetts is one of the best-educated states in the country, the only one in which more than half the workforce holds a bachelor’s degree or better. Yet when Pioneer Institute commissioned and Emerson College Polling conducted a survey that asked state residents some of the questions immigrants must answer correctly to gain U.S. citizenship, the responses earned those voters a cumulative grade of 63, or a “D.”

State residents got a failing grade on two basic questions about the U.S. Senate. Only 52% knew the Senate has 100 members, while just 55% knew that a senator’s term is six years.

The questions most often answered correctly were one in which respondents were given a list of places and asked which is a U.S. territory, and one about the month in which federal elections are held. Eighty-five percent identified Puerto Rico as a territory and 76% knew federal elections are held in November. This means the best grades Massachusetts residents could muster are a “B” and a “C.”

There wasn’t a lot of difference in how well respondents did based on party affiliation, but registered voters scored higher than those who aren’t registered. Unaffiliated voters scored best, getting 69% correct. They were followed by Democrats and Republicans, each at 62%. Those who aren’t registered to vote earned a failing grade, getting the correct answer just 46% of the time.

It’s not surprising that those with more education did better, but perhaps the most troubling parts of the poll are the breakdowns based on respondents’ age and how many civics classes they have taken. Those over 65 did best in the poll, getting 75% of the questions right. They were followed by those ages 55-64 (68%) and ages 45-54 (65%). The three youngest age ranges did the poorest — ages 18-24 (58%), ages 35-44 (55%), and ages 25-34 (52%).

Performance was correlated with the number of civics classes taken. Respondents who took multiple civics classes in middle or high school got an average 69% of the questions right, while those who took one class averaged 65%, and those who didn’t take any averaged 58%.

The poor performance of younger people on the exam and the correlation between performance and the number of civics courses taken highlight the near-disappearance of civics from Massachusetts public school curricula in recent decades. As public education has increasingly come to be thought of as little more than workforce development, teaching civics has become less and less of a priority.

America’s Founding Fathers weren’t perfect, but they possessed wisdom that was far ahead of their times. They saw the primary role of public education at the state and local levels as preparing young people to be active participants in our democracy. At a time when our nation faces staggering challenges and much of the public lacks even the most rudimentary civic knowledge needed to choose between different approaches to confronting those challenges, we may be about to learn — the hard way — just how right the founders were.

Charles Chieppo is a senior fellow and Jamie Gass is the director the Center for School Reform at Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based think tank.

The number of migrants pouring across the southern border hit a record high, according to data released last week. Illegal immigrant crossings soared 21% over the previous month. On a yearly basis, the figure hit 2.48 million.

Democrats may feign shock and distress. Don’t be fooled. Dems see these newcomers as their guarantee of a permanent voting majority in local elections. Not years from now, after the newcomers become citizens. Right now.

New York Mayor Eric Adams’ rhetoric is typical. He warns that the overwhelming number of migrants arriving — currently 16,000 to 17,000 a month — “will destroy New York City,” but he’s also leading the legal effort to turn migrants into voters.

Adams and other New York Democrats pushed President Joe Biden to expedite work authorizations for them. They said it’s about making migrants self-sufficient. Maybe, but Dems have another powerful motive.

If you read the fine print of New York City’s “Our City, Our Vote” law, enacted in December 2021, it says that anyone with a work authorization who has been in the city for a mere 30 days can vote, even if they entered the country illegally.

The law is tied up in court.

A group of Republicans led by Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella sued, arguing the state constitution grants the right to vote to “every citizen.” A Staten Island judge bought that argument and struck down the law, but Adams’ law department is appealing that ruling in a higher court, arguing that the state constitution does not specifically prohibit noncitizens from voting.

Adams has a shot at winning. Vermont’s top court ruled in favor of allowing noncitizens to vote in municipal elections, even though the Vermont constitution restricts voting in state elections to U.S. citizens.

California and Maryland also already permit municipalities to enfranchise noncitizens.

The Boston City Council is debating allowing newcomers to vote, including migrants who recently came across the border illegally and have temporary protected status.

In Washington, D.C., Democrats rammed through a local law in November 2022 allowing noncitizens, even foreign embassy employees, to vote, as long as they’ve resided in the city for 30 days.

In Connecticut, Democrats want to amend the state’s constitution to allow noncitizens to vote in state and local elections.

Voting is a privilege reserved for citizens. Once immigrants follow the law, become naturalized and swear loyalty to this nation and its Constitution, they should be entitled to vote. Not before.

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths.

Bud Light.

Other than that, it’s been up, up and away ever since Brandon was installed as president in January 2021.

Of course, in the tradition of state-run media, Biden’s demolition of American middle-class living standards is being hailed because… Democrats.

The New York Times’s Paul Krugman says the economy is “remarkably successful, even if nobody will believe it.”

Bloomberg Opinion: “Biden’s Economy Is Great Everywhere Except in the Polls.”

The Washington Post began its daily Democrat cheerleading by saying, “As the US economy continues to improve, President Joe Biden continues to not get credit for it.”

So who are you going to believe, the comrades of state-run media or your lying eyes… or wallet.

Occasionally I ask my radio audience what they’re seeing in their own lives.

The consensus? Prices are way, way up, portions are down, and everybody who’s not a criminal illegal alien living large on welfare is running out of money.

Here are some of my audience’s recent observations on their daily experiences in this “remarkably successful” economy:

From 413 area code: “Daycare was $70 a day for 12 hours and they fed the kids. Now it’s $90 a day for 10 hours, and I have to provide food. Only a 28% increase, but I didn’t get a 28% pay increase.”

From 603: “Mama Rosie’s frozen pasta used to be 2 bucks now 4 bucks at Market Basket. Almost $8 at Shaw’s!”

From 207: “The average transmission replacement 6-7 years ago was around $3000. The average price I’m seeing now is around $6-7000 for a transmission and people can’t afford new car payments.”

No kidding. In 2017, there were 36 new models priced for less than $25,000. Now automakers produce only 10 such economy cars.

That stat came from the Wall Street Journal, which also ran a quote from a house cleaner in Illinois:

“I almost had a heart attack the other day when I saw a box of cereal for $8.99.”

When the RINO swells at the Wall Street Journal notice that the peasants are revolting, as they used to say, then the Democrats have a problem.

Back to my unscientific survey:

Matt: “My son plays hockey and baseball. A hockey stick is $300, used to be a buck and a half. Mouthpieces are 2 for $20, used to be 5 bucks apiece. Skates are up to $600. Batting gloves used to be $20, now $45.99.”

Scotia: “I have a cat, Norton. He eats Fancy Feed. Two years ago, it was 62 cents a can, now it’s 90 cents. The other brand went from 70 cents to $1.39. And those are the puny little cans. Norton’s gonna have to get a job.”

Bob from Plymouth: “My wife and I used to go to the 99, would spend $300-400 a month there. Chicken parmesan was $9.99. The other night I picked up two orders and it cost $37 and change and the portions seemed a lot smaller.”

From 860: “Shake & Bake no longer provides plastic bags in the box to coat your meats in. Unbelievable.”

Steve in Vermont: “I heat with coal. A 40-pound bag last year cost $6, now it’s $12.99. So a ton went from $300 to $650 in one year – a 117 percent jump.”

From 978: “McDonald’s Sausage Burrito, extra hash browns, medium OJ & medium coffee. Used to be $10. Last week $18.”

From 407: “Every staple product I buy at Publix has gone up at least 20% since Jan. 2021. With exception of milk, fruit and vegetables, I seldom buy anything unless it’s on BOGO.”

Farmer Jon in 860: “I’ve got 2023 expenses & 1975 income. Let’s go Brandon!”

Joe, a truck-repair shop owner in rural Maine: “Tires are through the roof, batteries that were 100-150 are now ticking over 200. A brake job has gone from $300 to $400, it’s the cost of the parts, the metals like rotors. We say the parts are all made out of ‘Chinese-ium.’ Biden is just hammering us.”

From 774: “Auto insurance. Just got new policy from $102 to $218 a month. Same coverage.”

From 781: “On Jan. 18 2000 I put 17 gallons of hi-test into my vintage 2001 Volvo at $2.25 a gallon. $38.25. Today at $4.49 the same 17 gals. $76.33. The same cheap gas station I’ve used for years.”

Justin at Boyle’s Bodyworks in Arlington: “All my ancillary supplies are at least double.”

From 860: “A 50-lb. bag of dog food is now 33 lbs. and costs more than the 50-lb. bag did. That’s Bidenomics for you!”

Limerick Guy: “Less than 2 years ago I paid $14 for a 2-pack of Costco brand fiber powder & today I purchased the same 2-pack for $29. Thanks, Brandon.”

Tony: “I priced some tires for a small Toyota RAV4 — $550 31/2 years ago, $850 now and these aren’t race-car super-duper tires. Truck tires are double, from $200 to $400.”

Mindy in Bangor: “Apartment rent used to $500, now it’s $1,200.”

From 401: “My cheapest Medicare Part D drug plan went from $6.80 a month to $15.70 a month. Thank you Brandon for bringing down the price of what you call prescription ‘jugs.’”

Andrew: “My old grandmother used to wring out wet paper towels and put them to dry and then re-use. I thought she was insane. Now an 8-pack of towels costs $30 and guess what I’m doing? Wringing them out like my grandmother.”

But… but… don’t my listeners read the New York Times? If they did, they’d realize how great the economy is.

Randy Newman used to sing, “Mr. President, have pity on the working man.”

Too bad Joe Biden doesn’t know any workingmen, or women. Too bad none of the Democrats do anymore. But I just thought of something else that’s gone down in price since January 2021.

Fentanyl. Maybe it’s all part of the plan.

(Order Howie’s new book, “Paper Boy: Read All About It!” at howiecarrshow.com or amazon.com.)

American businesses pay the highest swipe fees in the industrialized world. While these fees remain hidden from consumers, their impact is far-reaching. Last year alone, U.S. merchants paid over $126 billion in credit card processing fees, a staggering increase of more than 20% from just a year earlier. Such an exponential rise has severe implications for businesses, especially small enterprises, struggling to recover from the economic aftermath of the pandemic.

Yet Visa and Mastercard just announced they will raise these fees again to further pad their bottom line. The credit card giants are preparing to heap additional financial burdens on merchants with fee hikes that could cost merchants an extra $502 million annually.

These costs aren’t absorbed solely by businesses; because when profit margins are tight, merchants have no choice but to pass these fees on to consumers, leading to higher prices across the board. Estimates show the average American family pays an additional $1,000 a year in higher priced goods as a result of these swipe fees.

The impending fee hikes set to be imposed by Visa and Mastercard in the coming months signal more than just a financial blow to merchants and consumers alike. It underscores a systemic issue where money spent in your local community is subtly siphoned away to Wall Street, only to reappear in the form of extravagant sponsorships and VIP privileges sponsored by the credit card giants.

Currently, Visa and Mastercard set the swipe fees merchants pay. While network fees directly benefit the card companies, the big banks issuing the cards get a portion of those fees, which incentivizes them to oppose any effort to lower fees for merchants. With a substantial rise in fees on the horizon, Congress must address this clear market collusion.

Thankfully, there is a solution. The Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA) aims to alleviate the burden put on businesses by allowing merchants to choose between multiple transaction routing options when processing a credit card. This step, though seemingly minor, can have a profound impact by fostering a more competitive payment processing market, leading to a reduction in swipe fees and the cost of goods overall.

Opponents on Wall Street often raise concerns that heightened competition might jeopardize the availability of credit card rewards points. However, new reporting shows that is not the case. If not clear by how much money the credit card giants spend on flashy advertising, Visa maintains incredibly high profit margins of over 50%, with Mastercard trailing closely with almost 45%.

A competitive payment landscape would compel credit card companies to enhance their offerings to stay relevant. Heightened competition need not dampen credit card rewards; it can serve as a catalyst for innovation.

Visa and Mastercard’s opulent displays might be captivating, but it’s essential to see beyond the glitter. Behind the scenes, small businesses in your community are being stifled by these ever-rising fees, and you are paying more every time you check out.

Hopefully, Congress will put Main Street before Wall Street.

Kelly McKone is Executive Vice President of Real Estate for 1784 Capital Holdings, a nationwide leader in self-storage development./InsideSources 

Instead, Biden is providing Hamas, Iran’s jihadist proxy, with $100 million in humanitarian aid that will surely end up in the hands of the Hamas terrorists.

The United States says it does not pay ransom for hostages, except when it does. That is when Americans are taken hostage by Iran or one of its proxies, and a Democrat, like Joe Biden or Barack Obama, is in the White House.

Then the U.S. is fair game and Iran, the biggest spreader of terrorism in the world, keeps taking Americans hostage. The money keeps rolling in.

Hardly had Biden announced approval of the $100 million in aid to the Palestinians in Gaza then Hamas, which controls the place, released two Americans they had kidnapped during their barbaric killing spree Oct. 7 where they slaughtered 1,400 people in Israel, including women and children.

Among those killed were 30 Americans, who Biden failed to mention —or hold Iran accountable for — in his rambling and confused speech last Thursday. Other Americans, including children, were also kidnapped and are being held in Gaza, if they are still alive.

It is a good thing that the two Americans — mother and daughter Judith and Natalie Raanan from Illinois — were released.

Maybe if Biden comes up with another $100 million for Hamas to rip off, he can get two more Americans released.

It is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Obama sent a planeload of cash to Iran to release five U.S. hostages. And Biden is, or was, unfreezing $6 billion for Iran in exchange of five American hostages Iran recently let go.

Biden’s policy, like Obama’s before him, is to pay terrorists rather than eliminate them.

The Jew-hating, America-bashing mullahs in Iran and the Islamic terrorists have Biden’s number and have had it since the day Biden launched his humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan where 13 U.S. American service members were needlessly killed at the Kabul Airport.

Smelling weakness, Russia’s Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and China inches closer to invading Taiwan.

Meanwhile the U.S border remains wide open and nobody, including the FBI, knows how many terrorists are among the almost two million getaways that have crossed illegally into the U. S.

During his visit to Israel, Biden was supposed to hold a major summit on the Israel War in Amman, Jordan, with Jordan King Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

But, using the bombing of a hospital in Gaza as an excuse — for which Hamas was guilty of  — Abdullah stiffed Biden and cancelled the meeting. And the photo op of Biden making peace in the Middle East was never taken.

So, Biden flew all the way to Israel to settle for a photo of him hugging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Tel Aviv airport.

It was at that meeting that Biden advised Netanyahu how to conduct the war, something he has never done with President Volodymir Zelensky in the Ukraine.

Of course, Biden can attack Putin. Biden does not have hate-filled Russians demonstrating against him and his support of Ukraine. But he has thousands of hate-filled antisemitic pro-Hamas groups in the U.S. demonstrating against Israel but has little to say about them.

Biden is brave enough to attack Putin, who started the war in Ukraine, but fearful of even uttering the name of Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei, let alone attacking him.

Biden needs to take the next exit on his road to appeasement.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

The T is still a dangerous and unreliable mess even after Healey hired a public relations savvy general manager and replaced much of the board of directors.

Healey blamed the Republican Baker administration for the latest embarrassment – the narrow rail problems on the new Green Line extension. She talks a tough game but hasn’t produced with results.

“What’s important is that it was not disclosed, and it was really not addressed,” she said of the Green Line fiasco. “That is something we’ve been really clear about. Under the prior administration, senior management at the T, for whatever poor judgment made the decision not to disclose identified failures, and then made the poor decision not to address those failures prior to the opening of the Green Line extension.”

The Union Square branch of the new Green Line needs 50% of its track replaced while the new Medford branch, just opened in December, needs repairs on 80% of the tracks.

Two senior management officials who worked on the extension were reportedly canned by Healey.

In a new problem, the T had to bring in shuttle buses on the C branch of the Green Line on Wednesday because of electrical problems on the line. This is in addition to other delays on Green Line that have left riders miserable and frustrated.

The Democratic governor defended her general performance on the T, noting she brought in a new GM and safety chief who she claims have sought to be transparent.

But nearly a year into her tenure, the T – including all the lines and branches – is no safer or reliable than under the Baker administration or other administrations. The T has tried PR moves like starting a new podcast featuring GM Phillip Eng, but the first episode was pulled for unknown reasons before finally getting to see the light of day.

Starting a happy talk podcast with a softball interview with Eng does not mean the T is more accessible. When new problems crop up – like several near misses between Red Line trains and T workers – Healey calls them “unacceptable” but what is she doing to prevent them?

“I will say this, that every effort has been made to make sure that with this administration, we have a team in place that understands its responsibility, and takes that responsibility seriously,” Healey said.

Those are fine words, but riders want results. And so far they’re not getting them.

Recent years have been brutal going for lobstermen, such that the survival of our trade is highly uncertain. Lobstermen are at once negotiating higher fuel costs, higher bait costs, higher shipping costs, and an agitation campaign from dark money nonprofits trained on major buyers of Maine lobster products. NOAA’s new regulatory plan is poised to decimate our inventory.

NOAA’s new plan – a rule promulgated under the Marine Mammal Protection Act – would expand an existing restricted area, where lobster fishing is banned for three months each year. The scope of the expansion is unclear as of this writing, but any expansion is unwelcome as a matter of precedent and a practical business matter.

As with the previous plan, NOAA is allegedly crafting its new rule to protect the endangered north Atlantic right whale. The agency maintains vessel strikes and entanglements with lobster gear are killing these marine mammals.

It’s important to emphasize that there is no evidence lobstermen are harming right whales. In fact, the late surge in deaths across whale species tracks construction and survey activity in support of offshore wind platforms. I am not sure offshore wind development is to blame. But the Biden administration is quietly studying that possibility, even as it pins blame on the lobster industry.

The Biden administration has not demonstrated – because it cannot – that lobstermen harm right whales. But even if it could make that showing, this latest proposal would still be unjustified. The people have first claim on the government’s protection. Attacking American workers, and the communities who depend on us, to the alleged benefit of endangered whales is a betrayal of the government’s duty of care to its citizens.

These events demonstrate the extent to which agency process, bad science, and complex statutory schemes obfuscate the practical needs and interests of working people. Much is in mind for NOAA Fisheries – rule makings, biological opinions, the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Remote coastal communities who depend on a trade to survive do not figure in interagency arcana.

I can’t predict what lobstermen and maritime workers will do for work in the future, but I know that the demise of our lobster fishery will be a social and economic catastrophe.

Downeast fishery spans Washington and Hankcock counties. Washington is the poorest county in Maine, with a poverty rate near 20%. The three largest sources of income in that county come from government assistance, the Woodland Pulp paper mill, and lobstering. Four of Maine’s top-ten earning ports are in the Downeast fishery. Lobster dollars from these ports keep the service and retail economies of this depressed region moving. Local banks finance home, boat, and business loans for lobstermen. This remote, sparsely populated area – Québec City is closer than Boston – has no viable economic alternatives without the lobster industry.

Lobstering supports 15,000 jobs through the maritime supply chain and generates $1 billion annually for the local economy. Don’t let the macros obscure this essential fact – our lobster fleet is composed exclusively of independent operators. Every Maine lobster product that reaches your plate was plucked from the sea by a captain who owns his own vessel, or a sternman that he employs.

There are no corporate players in the Gulf of Maine. Lobstering is a heritage passed down within families over many generations.

For this reason, lobstermen don’t have the resources to retain lobbyists or trade associations to promote our interests in Washington. We’re barely able to advocate on our own. Laying traps, harvesting lobster, or keeping our vessels ship-shape has near-exclusive claim on our time. It’s always jarring when fisheries regulators remind us to make townhall meetings. It’s hard to cut away for a meeting while at sea.

The invitation is insincere in all events. It’s a rare day when NOAA listens to us.

Dustin Delano, a fourth-generation lobstermen, is chief operating officer of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association

At Harvard University in Cambridge, newly installed President Claudine Gay, after first declining to take a public stance, concluded that she should issue a statement when Palestinian sympathizers within the student body outrageously excused the slaughter by Hamas, instead choosing to highlight the righteousness of their political cause. Gay’s statement, in relevant part, said: “As the events of recent days continue to reverberate, let there be no doubt that I condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas.” She noted that regardless of one’s political views, the slaughter of innocents is indefensible. She noted that no student group “speaks for Harvard University or its leadership.”

And therein lies the rub. Gay was speaking for the institution, rather than for herself. It is highly dubious that an educational institution should take official positions on any political or geopolitical matter, particularly one as divisive as the bitter decades-long battle between Israel and the Palestinians. If a university is truly going to be home to a wide and diverse assortment of views on myriad political, social, religious, and intellectual issues of the day, it has to be made clear to students, faculty members, alumni and the general public that all members of the academic community must feel free to opine, to express minority-held and even extremist views. There can be no “official” position on any such subject, at Harvard or elsewhere.

The duty of college administrators in these fraught situations is to maintain an atmosphere in which all sides feel free and safe to express their views, even if many on campus (or the administrators themselves) are highly offended and outraged. Many universities and colleges have seen physical violence and assaults break out due to students in both camps’ feeling that they are unable to discuss their differences, which is completely contradictory to the goals of the liberal arts. It thus falls on administrators’ shoulders to bridge this divide.

At Tufts University in Medford, the same issue arose. Pro-Palestinian students issued what were reasonably described as “obscene” comments supporting Hamas issued by the Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine group. In response, a university spokesperson issued a statement: “Dismissing the loss of Israeli lives in the recent surprise attacks cannot be condoned. We deeply mourn those losses and vehemently disagree with the SJP statement. No student groups speak for the University.”

However, the Tufts statement completely misses the threshold question: Should anyone speak for Tufts on such highly contentious political matters? Indeed, should a university even have a political position? If Tufts, a liberal arts university, is to remain a venue where all sides feel free to express even seemingly outrageous minority-held views, then the administration’s actions seem counter to this vital mission.

Our society has myriad venues through which citizens and non-citizens alike are able to express their opinions: Newspapers, radio, television, street-corner orations, rallies and, indeed, for citizens, the ballot box. However, there is one precious location where all views may be expressed publicly without those who hold minority views fearing the consequences of provoking official condemnation or even hints at official discipline: Our liberal arts campuses.

Harvey Silverglate is a criminal defense and civil liberties lawyer with offices in Cambridge and Boston.

Chutkan is hearing the Jan. 6 case against Trump brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith and has decided to partially muzzle Trump with an order that is nonsensical and possibly unconstitutional.

It stipulates that Trump can still criticize the Biden administration and the Department of Justice and the “campaign platforms and policies” of his GOP rivals, including former Vice President Mike Pence. And Trump can continue to say he’s “innocent of the charges against him.”

Chutkan has forbidden Trump from statements targeting the special counsel, Jack Smith, who brought the charges against him, or “any reasonably foreseeable witness or the substance of their testimony.”

There’s no doubt that Trump’s commentary about the case has been lurid, at best. He shouldn’t call Jack Smith “deranged” or a “thug,” but this, alas, is how the former president expresses himself. And he has the right to comment on an inherently political case with massive political implications.

It’s not as though Trump is charged with a random personal offense. The alleged crimes have to do with his conduct after the 2020 election. Everything about the case is a matter of hot political dispute.

It is absurd to try to ban Trump from attacking the special counsel when he is the Justice Department’s instrument for bringing the charges. Besides, such prosecutors are always criticized by their targets. If, for some reason, attacks on Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr had been ruled out of bounds during the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky investigations, Bill Clinton’s defenders would have been rendered practically mute.

As for the potential witnesses, one of them is Mike Pence, who is running against Trump for president. It is mighty generous of Judge Chutkan to allow Trump to address Pence’s policy plans. The chief political dispute between the two candidates, though, has to do with Jan. 6 and their clashing interpretations of who was right on that day.
Pence discusses this on the campaign trail, and Trump should be able to offer his rival interpretation. Welcome to life in a free society.

Chutkan wants to shut up Trump about questions that will be absolutely central to the 2024 campaign if he’s the Republican nominee. Joe Biden will run, to a large extent, on Jan. 6, and Trump will run, to a large extent, on the justice system being manipulated against him by the likes of Jack Smith.

Chutkan may think she has no choice. But the decision to charge Trump in this case was discretionary; the decision to schedule the trial in the midst of a presidential election was discretionary; and her unwillingness to see the obvious flaws in her order is discretionary, too.

A federal judge shouldn’t be the one setting the rules of the road for a presidential election.

Rich Lowry is editor in chief of the National Review

She is about to become… a victim.

Actually she already is.  A local Hamas cheerleading cell has already issued a statement on her behalf to a TV station:

“Zena is being targeted simply because she is an Arab.”

You don’t say. So it has nothing to do with her callously tearing down posters of Israeli children kidnapped by Nazi fiends after the rape and slaughter of 1300 Israelis.

Her former employer, Dr. Marc Nevins of Nevins Dental Center, announced her firing for “actions that are contrary to our community standards and to the basic values of my clinical practice.”

But Doc, don’t you understand that she’s the victim here. I predict a front-page story in state-run media, most likely the Boston Globe, in three… two… one.

This is the traditional m.o. now. Terrorists do something unspeakably horrible to innocent individuals, and the entire story suddenly becomes the supposed overreaction of the victims.

The late comedian Norm Macdonald summed it up perfectly in a sarcastic 2016 tweet:

“What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims.”

Biden and his minions seem more worried about “Islamophobia” than about the Nazi pogroms the Muslims have been conducting in southern Israel.

This woman Zena is apparently a graduate of Boston University, historically Methodist but with a heavy Jewish influence forever. I wonder if she had a scholarship to BU, and who paid for that scholarship.

It seems to be a BU thing, tearing down the KIDNAPPED posters. A younger student was just recorded doing the same thing as the Arab dentist.

The homely coed had a great defense.

“I’m Jewish,” she said.

From what I can see, the fired dentist lives in, of all places, Newton. Odd place to choose as your home if you’re simmering with the kind of hatred she seems consumed by.

I mean, does Zena vote in the local elections in Newton? What does she think she sees all those… Zionist names on the ballot?

You would think that at least a few of these new Americans who are waving the pom-poms for the savage Muslim killers in the Mideast might have picked up stakes and left the Great Satan, put their dinars where their mouths are, so to speak.

Until Donald Trump came along, these bloodthirsty savages had their own unofficial state, under control of a terror cell called ISIS. They referred to their Muslim thugocracy as a “caliphate.” It was run by a genocidal butcher whom the Washington Post respectfully described as “an austere religious scholar.”

I’m sure ISIS could have used a few dentists back when they were trying to murder every non-Sunni in Iraq and Syria. Their capital was in Raqqa, Syria.

Gays were dragged to the tops of Raqqa’s tallest buildings (two, sometimes even three stories) and hurled to their deaths. Local young women from religious minorities (including Shia Muslims) were gang-raped every evening by hundreds of austere religious scholars.

Like Hamas, ISIS enjoyed beheading infidels. Once they burned a Jordanian Air Force pilot alive.

It all seems a very long way from Newton, from The Street in Chestnut Hill, from civilization.

But until you get busted tearing down those posters, you can cheer on the ongoing genocide (and not just of Jews either). And there is never, ever any pushback from the virtue-signaling, spineless heretics.

If anyone ever looks at one of these Nazis cross-eyed while they’re screaming “Gas the Jews!” or “Allahu Akhbar” as they shoot up a gay bar, they just start yelling that it’s all Islamophobia, or something.

Look at the pampered pukes from Harvard, complaining about the “apartheid” regime of Israel. As I’ve said, isn’t “apartheid” just another word for “racism?” And Harvard’s racist admissions policy, recently ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court, is probably the reason most of these protected-class box-checkers were even admitted in the first place.

They certainly don’t seem to be very bright, even by Harvard standards.

Now, though, an alumni group has been trying to raise money for the Nazis of Harvard Square because their racist screeds have exposed the Ivy League Nazis to “severe risks to their immigration status and future career prospects.”

Oh no! You mean they might have to go home to these Third World failed states that they fled to come here and live on the arm in this terrible racist land?

The pitch for the Nazis of Harvard Square continued:

“They may require legal counsel, health care, mental health support, financial aid or mentorship to navigate these turbulent and uncertain times.”

Could I offer them some mentorship? Go home. The job opportunities in Raqqa aren’t what they used to be, but thanks to Biden the Taliban is back in charge in Afghanistan. Have the halftime stonings of gays resumed at the soccer stadium in Kabul?

I hear the Taliban is looking for a few good endodontists.

But you know, endodontist in Kabul not nearly as good a job as being a “victim” in the Great Satan. For one thing, as a victim, you can still live in civilization, with running water, central heating, electricity and, dare I say it, the right not to wear a hajib.

Something tells me that Rena, like all the Nazis of Harvard Square – Fatima, Mohini, Reem et al. – would much prefer to live in this racist, xenophobic, nativist, Islamophobic society than go home and fight Zionist imperialism.

(Order Howie’s new book, “Paper Boy: Read All About It!” at howiecarrshow.com or amazon.com.)

FIRST MISFIRE: U.S. military and intel experts have concluded that a Palestinian terrorist rocket misfired after being aimed at Israel from inside Gaza, apparently launched by a group called the Islamic Jihad.

The misfired terrorist rocket quickly plummeted and exploded in the parking lot of Gaza’s al-Ahli Arab Hospital, killing masses of Palestinian civilians. And the tragedy was instantly (see also: predictably) exploited by Hamas, the terrorists who rule Gaza. Hamas had just committed mass atrocities in Israel, knowing that would goad Israel into a massive retaliation that would kill many of Gaza’s Palestinian population. That was fine with Hamas. Hamas instantly announced Israel had attacked the hospital, even though they had no evidence proving it.

SECOND MISFIRE: The news media of America and the world rushed to rocket around the world the news of the tragedy. But unforgivably, even the best of the U.S. news media linked the truth of that attack with Hamas’s apparent falsehood that blamed Israel without offering any evidence. Journalists of course all knew better: Hamas’ terrorists infamously live and launch attacks on Israel while using Gaza civilians as human shields. They are willing to see fellow Palestinians killed by Israeli retaliation — if it makes Israel look bad as the world watches.

Yet news organizations everywhere fell into the trap. Of course Al Jazeera, the Arab world’s famous news blanket that is funded by Qatar, instantly popped up on news screens everywhere reporting that Israel had attacked that Gaza hospital causing massive casualties.

The New York Times raced to splash news screens with its first erroneous report of the Gaza hospital explosion at 2:51 p.m. EDT Tuesday. But minutes later, at 3:06:40 p.m., despite having time to get themselves together, the Times again fell into Hamas’ trap, emailing: “Breaking News: At least 500 killed in Israeli strike on Gaza hospital, Palestinian officials say.” Israeli strike?

You might be thinking it was 100% true that the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said exactly that. But in this age of news manipulation by misinformation, media must rethink how and what they report.

It took two days for U.S. military and intel experts to conclude with certainty that the hospital bombing didn’t have the crater an Israeli airstrike would have created – but it had all the signs of a misfired Palestinian terrorist rocket that simply failed and fell.

But by then it was too late for truth to prevail. News screens had gushed apparent misinformation blaming Israel for the attack. That ignited rage throughout the Arab world. Instant protests of Arab activists and Palestinian sympathizers rocked Middle East capitals. Of course, that caused Arab leaders to cancel their planned summit in Jordan, where Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, U.S. President Joe Biden, Saudi and Gulf state leaders might have headed off the next hell in Gaza.

That’s how Hamas terrorists got what they wanted most this past week – the cancellation of what they knew would be an anti-Hamas Arab summit.

Tribune News Service

Biden’s personal courage was accompanied by wisdom, all displayed with the knowledge that his immediate, resolute commitment to Israel would unleash rage from the predictable quarters. The leaders of Arab countries that American taxpayers help sustain nonetheless refused to meet with Biden on his Mideast trip, fearful of being toppled by the spillover of raw Jew-hatred on the Arab street. This is not Biden’s first rodeo: he tipped his cap to these leaders and stayed diplomatically mum.

Meanwhile, in order to warn the Iranian mullahs who fund and control both Hamas and Hezbollah that we had Israel’s back more than nominally, Biden moved promptly to bolster Israel’s military capacity, and sent two warplane-packed aircraft carriers to Israel’s coast. Thus far Biden’s move has restrained Iran from directing Hezbollah to unleash its 130,000 rockets from Lebanon into Israel.

Here at home, Biden has remained unbowed by his party’s hard left wing, which adjudges itself “progressive” while whitewashing Hamas’ murder and maiming of 5,000 Israelis and while condemning Israel for having the nerve to try to prevent the slaughter, decapitation, burning alive, raping and abduction from happening yet again. From the moment news emerged on Oct. 7 of the mini-Holocaust perpetrated by the ISIS emulators who brutally rule Gaza, the president has been a forceful, unapologetic voice of moral clarity, denouncing the massacres as the massive crimes against humanity that anyone with decency can see they are. By asserting over and over that the United States stands with Israel, he purposefully informed America and the rest of the world that one either backed Israel on this or stood for nothing.

Europe, host of the Nazis’ extermination of 6 million Jews, followed Biden’s lead, one hopes without too much moral difficulty. In America, Republicans and the vast majority of Democrats comprehended the obvious: if Israel cannot stop Hamas from slaughtering Israelis, then Hamas will continue to slaughter Israelis. Pretty simple.

Some in the president’s party either do not grasp the obvious or are not excessively bothered by it, any more than they have been excessively bothered by the smaller bore versions of the same thing that have been happening for the last 20 years preceding this month’s murder spree: tens of thousands of rockets fired by Hamas while hiding behind Palestinian innocents in order to kill Israeli innocents. The so-called Squad, Democratic Socialists of America and comfortable faculty and students on America’s most fashionable campuses have been perfectly down with this for years, and nothing about this latest massacre moves the moral needle for them a centimeter.

The embrace by some of Hamas’ Slaughter Incorporated isn’t merely tough to dislodge. It is impossible. When Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired a rocket from Gaza intended to kill Israelis but which instead killed Palestinians in a Gaza hospital, Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar and others bitterly denounced Israel for “targeting” the hospital. No matter that every intelligence service and independent analyst evaluating this concluded that Israel was innocent and Palestinian Jihad to blame. As always, facts present no obstacle: Tlaib, Omar and the usual sources in Hamas’ corner continue a thoroughly dishonest refrain and, to boot, condemn Biden for declining to buy the hogwash they enthusiastically buy – and peddle.

To the president’s great credit, he is not buying. And he is not pretending to do so.

Jeff Robbins is a Boston lawyer and former U.S. delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

Biden’s attempt to tie the Israel-Hamas conflict to support for Ukraine has drawn the ire of Republicans and presidential candidates looking to separate themselves from the crowded field. And the Democratic president’s strong stance for Israel is prompting blowback in his own party — potentially siphoning away badly-needed progressive voters.

Some candidates and their super PACs are jumping into war footing, flooding the airwaves with new ads about the Israeli-Hamas war.

“The shame of it all is that we wouldn’t be in this terrible position if Joe Biden hadn’t been so weak in Afghanistan, so slow in Ukraine, so pandering to Iran, and so absent from the border,” GOP presidential candidate and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said on X. “The world is on fire and America needs strong new leadership to deal with it.”

GOP candidate Sen. Tim Scott said in a radio interview the U.S. needs to “stand shoulder to shoulder” with Israel with “no daylight” between the two countries.

“We’re seeing the devastation and the human carnage brought to the Jewish people by Hamas,” Scott said. “We have to be very, very clear that we stand with Israel.”

Republicans in Congress are vowing to block further funding for Ukraine, leading to a likely future showdown with Biden.

Sen. J.D. Vance called Biden’s attempt to tie the Israel-Hamas war to aid for Ukraine as “completely disgraceful.”

“What Biden is doing is disgusting,” Vance said. “He’s using dead children in Israel to sell his disastrous Ukraine policy to skeptical Americans. They are not the same countries; they are not the same problems, and this effort to use Israel for political cover is offensive. Hell no.”

The war is already spilling over into the campaign. Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are feuding over whether the U.S. should take in Palestinian refugees, with DeSantis accusing the surging Haley of flip-flopping on the issue. Haley has strongly denied making the remarks about refugees being accepted into the U.S.

The former U.N. Ambassador is running second to Donald Trump in New Hampshire, where the former president is making a campaign stop on Monday.

DeSantis’s willingness to engage in a skirmish with Haley indicates both are fighting to be Trump’s main opposition, with Haley surging ahead in recent weeks.

The U.S.’s involvement in supplying aid and arms to Israel could also bring the threat of surging oil prices, making that a major 2024 issue.

It’s all fun and games until the price of gas hits $10 a gallon.

Or the supply chain gets disrupted and causes inflation to skyrocket.

These potential ramifications could trigger trouble for Biden, who is already struggling with weak job approval ratings and tied or behind Trump in most polls.

Biden’s strong stance in support of Israel may win him some votes with moderates and Jewish voters but could cost him votes with progressives who are mounting protests in support of the Palestinian people.

He’s even under pressure from some far-left lawmakers like the Squad and Sen. Edward Markey to support a cease-fire in Gaza, but so far the president isn’t biting.